Underwood, Patricia
Patricia Underwood (1947), American Designer
Patricia Underwood trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 1972. She was also awarded in 1984 by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She began by creating hats for Lipp Homfeld from ’73-75 (Hats by Lipp) deciding in ’76 to open her own atelier in New York. Appreciated by the great American designers, she has worked for Ellis, Caroline Roehm, Donna Karan, De La Renta, Klein and Blass. Her 20s-style cloches are famous, as is a very fine straw cowboy hat presented in 1991.
Underwood prefers neutral colours and, in ’94, presented a collection inspired by Modigliani. In addition, his hats are offered by more than 100 outlets in the States. A number of category awards have punctuated the designer’s 25-year career. Among the most important are a Coty Award, a CFDA Award in the American Accessories Achievement category and the nomination for Entrepreneur of the Year by Fashion Group International.
The hats, made and finished by hand, are created with selected materials and special techniques, which still bear the original idea in their names: this is also the case for horsehair, a woven thread that was once made from real horsehair and is now produced synthetically in Switzerland, or Milan straw, a natural straw weave supplied directly by Milanese manufacturers and which now comes from the Far East.
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